the pershing should be a medium tank and it's spot on the heavy tank tree taken by the m103. the pershing was in reality the shermans replacement and i think the game should reflect that.(rant over)
one thing that annoys me
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It was reclassified as a medium tank only after WW2. During the war it served in that role.
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The Pershing was originally classified as a heavy tank (and was specifically designed to counter the Tiger).
and for those of you (like my college professors) that insist (correctly) that wiki cannot be used as a sole primary sourceWikipedia said:
World War II Database said:
Counterargument: Even in June 1944, the plan was to replace M4 production entirely with M26s ASAP. Zaloga writes in Armored Thunderbolt that the Army General Staff and Service Forces agreed that the 1945 tank production was going to be 2,060 T26 (90mm), 2,728 T26 (105mm), and 3,000 M4A3 (105mm). By December, they'd dropped most of the 105mm howitzer T26s in favor of more 90mm gun tanks. Production of the 76mm M4A3 continued in 1945 because the Bulge caused both tank shortages and armored officers to scream for more firepower immediately, but it was explicitly a stopgap. Had the war continued into 1946, US armored units would look like, say, the panzer divisions in 1944, with the legacy ~30 ton medium tank in the process of replacement by a less reliable ~45 ton "medium". Note also the design heritage. The T26 was the final outcome of the T20 series of M4 replacements, sharing e.g. the Ford V8 engine and the turret ring diameter. The latter allowed the T23's turret to be mounted on the M4, which is where the 76mm M4 comes from. Had the US Army not been focused on thicker armor, we might well have gotten the T25 into service instead of the T26, as it was otherwise identical except for 1" thinner armor, and was comparable in weight to the M4A3E8.
And good heavens, it was not redesignated as a medium in 1957, it was redesignated in 1946. The M26 was pulled from US frontline service in 1951-2, and anyway by 1950 the US had decided that its tanks were universally going to be classified by gun caliber instead of weight, as 76mm Gun Tank, 90mm Gun Tank, 120mm Gun Tank instead of light, medium, or heavy. Heck, in 1957, OTCM (Ordnance Technical Committee Minutes) 36468 designated its successor, the M46, as obsolete.
Ultimately, the M26 was not intended to be used in separate heavy battalions like the Tiger I/II, the KV, or the IS, it was supposed to be the new standard tank. But the end of the war and its mechanical shortcomings prevented that.
firstly regardless of whether it was designed to combat the tigers it was also intended to replace the sherman secondly the non wikipedia sources does not explain why the pershing should be classified as a heavy and does not support the wikipedia article in any way the only thing the second article establishes is that there were competing views within the us army of how to conduct modern tank warfare that caused the pershing to be delayed.
Regardless of official contemporary classification, weight, armor and gun size heck even bad reliability makes it an heavy tank.
would you classify the panther as a heavy tank then because it ticks most of those boxes (as i don't believe it was ever fitted with a larger gun than 75 mm) the main point is that regardless of whether or not it is a heavy tank (which it is not) in all manners of historical realism the pershing is the intended successor to the sherman it is its replacement as the panther (witch i think you'll agree was a medium tank) was the replacement to the panzers 3 and 4.
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honestly? probably yes. it was heavily armored, had a pretty powerful gun and weighed 20 tonnes more than the PzIV. Its just that germany had larger beasts more suited to the heavy tank role around. The Panther project had a lot of design spec creep and was initially supposed to be a 30-35t medium tank but Hitler kept upping requirements.
When setting up models for the nations in hoi4 we have tried to go with their own classifications rather than say how stuff would be classified in hindsight etc and with emphasis for their intended role.
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I don't quite understand are you saying that the pershing was intended to be a heavy tank or that the panther is a heavy tank now or that the tiger is a light tank or the maus is a spg mi no entendo.
He is saying is that if USA considered Pershing to be Heavy tank, it will be listed as such - just like Germany considered Panther to be medium tank, so it will be listed in game as medium tank.
well there is the obvious problem the pershing was designed to replace a medium tank was built as a "heavy tank" was considered by some to be a heavy tank by most to be a medium was used as the sherman (as a medium tank or MBT) was and was upgraded/downgraded to an MBT the short version is there is not a sole on this earth that can definitively say what the pershing is but my point is the way it ended up and the way it was used indicate very strongly that the pershing should come after the sherman in the medium tank line.
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Light, medium & heavy are relative terms and can be misleading. Terms like scout/training tank, Main Battle Tank, Support Tank would better define their roles. So a Panther is a heavy tank to a 38t, but were both Main Battle Tanks in their day.
The Pershing was classified a Heavy Tank solely for morale purposes. After the war it wasn't necessary so they reclassified it as the medium tank it was.
Also the Panther weighs about as much as the IS-2. Think about that for a moment.
Also the Panther weighs about as much as the IS-2. Think about that for a moment.
I hope that the characteristics of tanks will be influenced by player choices. For instance with medium tank development, it would be possible for the United States to field a 44 ton Sherman and Germany to field a 30 ton Panther.
But classifying the Pershing as a WW2 medium tank would be a misnomer. The United States armored forces didn't field any other tank this heavy.
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Well, that is one of the issue of the system the way i see it, if the Panther (A) is 30 ton, what can stop you from increasing it to a 100 ton Panther with a 15 cm L100 gun, a 200mm sloped armour, a 2000 hp engine and a 100% reliability if it still cost the same ?
And I think this is the best you can do without having to resort even more to fictional models and generic placeholders.
And it´s way too arbitrary. Always was. It´s not like Moses saw a flaming bush saying which weight or role makes a tank heavy.
Aren't we than in the ackward situation where the Pershing/Tiger I/KV-1 are all the first equipment model for heavy tank? Which result i.e that the KV-1 has the same ap_attack value as the Tiger I and Pershing..... .